‘I wish you to observe,’ said the doctor to me, ‘that your coffee is getting cold, and the vetturino is waiting for us.’
‘Now, Doctor,’ said I, ‘do you really believe I am going back to Venice with you?’
Towards sunset I was in the public garden [of Venice]. As usual, there was very little company there. The elegant Venetian ladies dread the heat, and dare not go out in full daylight, but they also dread the cold, and never venture out in the night. There are three or four days in each season which seem expressly made for them, and then they raise the covers of their gondolas, but they rarely put their foot to the ground.
They are a species set apart, beings so frail and delicate, that one ray of sunlight would wither their beauty, or one breath of the breeze expose their very existence. All civilized men seek those places by preference where they may meet the fair sex; the theatres, the conversazioni, the cafés, and the sheltered enclosure of the Piazzetta, about seven o’clock in the evening. Therefore few remain in the gardens, but grumbling old men, stupid smokers, or melancholy victims to bile. You may class me amongst whichever you like of these three classes.
Gradually, I found myself quite alone; the elegant café, which extends itself to the lagoons, extinguished its tapers placed in lilies and marine flowers made of the crystal of Murano.
The last time you saw this garden, it was damp and sad enough! As for me, I went not there to seek bright thoughts, nor hoping to disencumber myself of my spleen. But the spring! as you say, who can resist the influence of the month of April? and at Venice, my dear friend, it is yet more impossible.
Even the stones are being clothed with verdure; those infected marshes which our gondolas so carefully avoided, two months since, are now watery meadows covered by cresses, seaweeds, reeds and flags, and all sorts of marine mosses, exhaling a peculiar perfume, beloved by those to whom the sea is a cherished memory; and harbouring thousands of sea-gulls, divers, and the lesser bustard. The petrel incessantly hovers over these floating meadows, where the ebb and flow bring the waters of the Adriatic every day, teeming with myriads of insects, madrepores, and shells.
Instead of the icy-cold alleys from which we so hastily fled, on the evening before your departure, and which I had never since had the courage to revisit, a half-warm sand, patches of Easter daisies, and groves of sumach and sycamores were just opening to the soft breezes from the Grecian shore. The little promontory, planted in the English fashion, is so beautiful, so thickly grown, so rich in flowers, perfume, and prospect, that I asked myself if it were not the promised land my dreams had revealed to me. But no, the promised land is pure from all sorrow, and this is already watered with my tears.
The sun had just sunk behind the Vicentine mountains. Blue mists were covering the whole heaven above Venice.